We all need a special place to meet with God, to chat, laugh, confess, share, and if necessary, to plead. This is mine.
A place to share the fullness of life, to confess mistakes and to dare to dream the impossible which only Christ can make possible. A place where thwarted ambitions and unrealised hopes can be reflected on knowing there is no dress rehearsal for life.
A place to work with God to change humanity until there are fewer people living or ending their life empty of joy and hope

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Olive Morgan: Virtual Friendship makes for Gospel Reality

Good afternoon God,
In the pause between Sunday Services, I just wanted to thank you for my very real virtual friend Olive.

Olive had thousands of virtual friends all over the world, people who, like myself, had never met her except in cyberspace but who nonetheless were invited to share in her world and in what mattered most to her.

In spite of her age (88), Olive didn't understand the word 'technophobia'. I have no idea whether or not she mastered her video-recorder, but she certainly manged to master modern telecommunications - and my bet is that if heaven has an internet - it wont take Olive long to find a way to get back on-line!

Those of us who followed her blog knew her as a lively, and passionate campaigner for social justice, someone who believed in speaking out as loudly as she could for those who had no voice. Her postings were designed to be informative and challenging, they were her regular early-morning wake up calls to a society and a Church which she sometimes felt were sleeping their way through life-changing moments. She took the best of the news and communicated it as a part of the contemporary gospel. proof positive that faith in action can and does change the world. It is a wonderful testimony to her ministry of communication that the last posting Olive made on her blog was concerned with the passing of the cluster munitions (prohibitions) act.

It's at times like this that we recognise how blurred the edges are between the 'real' and the 'virtual' worlds that some of us live in. Although I never met Olive, I always knew that behind the pages of her blog was a real woman, one who sometimes struggled with pain and ill health. Someone who knew grief as well as joy, but someone who chose always to live on a bigger map than most.
Through her blog and her interaction with the rest of the Methoblogosphere, Olive enjoyed a second-life which was far more real and engaging than anything that could be bought with linden dollars. She was precious to us, and we were real to her, real friends, real company, real conversation partners with whom she could be wonderfully honest and engaging.

Olive's blog 'Octomusings' was a window onto what was most real to Olive, which, because of her faith, meant that we were given a window onto life with you God, and onto the activity of the Methodist Church which she loved (and like most of us - wrestled with!).

She found a means of evangelising without preaching, a way of telling the good news that was truly 'pioneering' for her time and her generation. She was Methodism's own 'Fresh Expression' of a Local Preacher - on-line and up-to-date, engaged and relevant, passionate and pertinent.

2 comments:

Thank you, this tribute to Aunty Olive is very special. I am her niece and have many fond memories, particularly one of us flying kites together at an afternoon during a family afternoon kite flying session in Torquay at an Easter People conference where we were both working! She was a steward and I was one of the Sign Language interpreters for the Deaf at the conference.She will be greatly missed but sure Heaven is rejoicing at having her there, and yes if they have internet she will find a way to be on it!

About Me

One of Mr Wesley's Helpers in the London District of the British Methodist Church.
All the opinions expressed in this blog are my own and there is no guarantee that Mr Wesley (or the British Methodist Church) would necessarily approve.